White maine coon cat outdoors running across grass.Credit: Nils Jacobi/ IStockphoto/Getty Images
Domestic cats, while a great source of comfort to millions, are the largest carriers of toxoplasmosis that cause zoonosis, a study published in Nature Communications shows.
Toxoplasma gondii (T.gondii), found in approximately 30% of the human population, is hazardous for people with weak immune defences. The researchers from EpiMact at University of Limoges, France studied the evolution of the parasite's genome in recent history, over 40,000 years. They analysed a set of 156 genomes, including samples from Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
Study lead, Lokman Galal, then a postdoctoral fellow in Limoges, now at the Mivegec laboratory in Montpellier, told Nature Africa that domestic cats reached the Americas for the first time with Europeans sailors in the last few centuries. Although T. gondii populations were already found in the Americas, they were restricted to the range of wild cats.
“However, the introduction of the domestic cat to the Americas from Europe and Africa accompanied by T. gondii strains adapted to the domestic cat provided conditions for the emergence for the first time of toxoplasmosis as a major zoonotic disease in those areas,” he said.
Galal, hopes by identifying genes related to the specific adaptation of T. gondii to the domestic cat “the genes could be relevant targets in the perspective of developing a vaccine against toxoplasmosis in cats.”
